


and set the world into a blaze

by galfridian



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 10:53:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13075359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galfridian/pseuds/galfridian
Summary: Five drinks Benson and Barba share... and one they don't.





	and set the world into a blaze

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rosehips](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosehips/gifts).



After, she finds Barba at the bar. Liv hasn't worked with him long, and she can't say she knows him at all, but she knows he'll be here.

It's where she'd be: two friendships ruined and childhood memories tarnished in the process.

He has a drink in front of him—a scotch on the rocks—but he isn't drinking. Condensation has begun to pool around the bottom of the glass. Although his eyes are fixed on the glass, it's clear his mind is miles from the bar and his drink.

She doesn't speak as she sits next to him, just nods at his drink when the bartender catches her eye. When the bartender slides her on scotch toward her, Barba blinks. "Hey," she says.

"Benson." He says her name with the kind of ease that only a skilled prosecutor could feign. Then he sighs, his weariness showing itself.

Liv nudges his drink toward him. The condensation drips onto their fingers.

They drink.

The bartender has another drink waiting for each of them before they finish their first. She has to work the next morning—they both do—but she sits with him until last call. Inch by inch, the gulf between them crumbles, until finally they share their first companionable silence.

* * *

Noah tires of the celebration first, as any toddler might, and the others take his fussiness as their cue to leave. Amaro and Rollins leave last, soothing Noah as Liv prepares his dinner.

Barba cleans.

He doesn't know what drives him to it, except that Lucia Barba's house has always been as its tidiness following deaths and births. He can't stand the thought of leaving behind a mess for Liv.

Liv catches his eye once or twice, in between plating Noah's food and bringing him to the table. Amaro and Rollins slip away as the boy eats, their arms loaded with the trash bags Barba has already filled.

He's washing the dishes, half-listening to Liv talk with Noah, and the simplicity of it surprises him. He doesn't know if he's fit for fatherhood. The maelstrom his own father left in his wake makes him wary of it. But there's a certain comfort in the timbre of Liv's voice, in that delicate way she draws giggles from her overstimulated son. He could almost be listening to a scene from his childhood.

Liv manages to get Noah to sleep little struggle. He's worn out, like all of them.

She returns to the living room with a bottle of wine. "Just enough for two more glasses," she says. "Help me finish it?"

He agrees. They don't talk, because her day has been filled with talking and because sometimes they work better in the silences, and instead listen to Noah's snoring over the monitor.

* * *

He waits for Liv at the bar. It's been ten days since Utley, and Liv has mostly spent it giving statements and dealing with IA and trying to carve out as much time with Noah as she can. She goes back to work in the morning, and Barba thinks she might come searching for a little bit of familiarity to ease her back into it.

Sure enough, an hour or so later, Liv slides onto the stool next to his. Her bruises haven't fully faded, and when she settles beside him with a sigh, she looks a little like she's been to war.

"It's like they _want_ you to be broken," Liv grumbles two or three drinks into the evening,, "so that they can say they fixed you."

"You aren't broken," says Barba, "but… you aren't okay either."

"Of course I'm not okay. That doesn't mean I can't do my job."

"No, it doesn't. But you don't need to do your job just because you can. You know you have nothing to prove to anyone, right?"

Liv's face takes on that expression he still sometimes sees whenever he challenges her on a case—like she's swallowed something bitter. He expects a rebuke, but her expression softens, becomes almost vulnerable. "I need to, Barba."

He nods. "Then you should."

* * *

Rafael has two drinks waiting when she arrives at the bar. The smile he offers her thins around the edges of his mouth and likely disappears the moment he turns from her. He's tired, and he has been for some time, Liv realizes. As she sits beside him, she's reminded of that time they sat in her office and joked about bickering into their eighties. Sometimes, she's afraid he'll work himself to death before then.

"How bad?" Liv asks. Her glass is cool against her fingers; the scotch burns as it goes down.

Rafael shrugs, a gesture so pedestrian and rare for her ADA that she almost laughs. "Could be worse."

"What will you do?" Liv tries not to think about what _they'll_ do, having to work with his substitute.

He considers her question, spinning his glass between his hands absentmindedly. When he answers, it's with a smile that comes a little easier than the first. "I don't know if I get to decide that."

That's right—his mother and his sisters will jump at the chance to monopolize his time.

"Well, if you ever need a break," says Liv, raising her glass.

"I'll call you," he agrees.

She doesn't tell him that confessing to the DA was the right thing to do or that he's done right by Ashtonja all this time—the former he knows to be true and the latter he knows to be a lie. Doing right by Ashtonja would've meant prioritizing her mother over his case.

She doesn't want to fill their friendship—or whatever this has become—with empty words, so she just says, "Good," and lets him buy her another drink.

* * *

Rafael doesn't realize how terrified he can feel for a child who isn't his. He doesn't know how strong the instinct will hit him—to find Noah, to help Liv, to protect them both—until it does. He sits on the sideline and waits, desperate for _some_ way to help the Bensons.

He sees them briefly after they're reunited, when he comes to the hospital with the squad. Liv shakes with adrenaline and relief and fear that isn't ready to dissipate, and he wants to hold her steady until the world feels solid to her again. But she's a mother, and right now, she needs to hold her son.

"Thank you," she tells them, as they leave her to rest. Rafael is last out the door, and as he closes it behind him, he thinks he hears Liv singing a Spanish nursery rhyme he once taught Noah.

He waits three days to go to them—starts out his door at least a dozen times in between—and when he arrives, he half-expects Liv to turn him away.

She almost looks relieved to see him. "Sorry I took a while to answer the door. I just got Noah to sleep and had to slip away."

"He's having trouble sleeping?"

"Some," she says, "He does better in my bed."

Rafael nods. "If he needs someone to talk to, I can recommend—"

"Yeah, that… We'll probably need to look into that." He understands her complicated feelings about therapy, but she knows she'll do anything for Noah's well-being.

"I thought you might need some company," he explains, "and maybe a drink?" He couldn't decide whether to bring scotch or wine, so he's opted for both.

"Please," Liv says. He follows her to her kitchen, where she retrieves a pair of wine glasses, and they settle at the island.

They drink, and she asks about what her squad has been up to, and he tells her about a case that's troubling him. She asks about his mother and his nephews and nieces and admits she'd love to hear about some of his childhood antics. He confesses, after some prodding, that he once tried to run away—a reaction to some perceived injustice—and that he only made it a few blocks.

"Lucia must have been terrified," says Liv. She's smiling, but she glances in the direction of her room.

"More furious than terrified," he assures her. He pauses, and then says, "I knew you would find him. I didn't question it for a moment."

"Thank you. I… I wasn't so certain." In years past, Liv might have bristled at his words—at any implication, really, that he truly understood her—but now her eyes are bright with unshed tears, and she reaches across the island to touch his hand.

And he's known. For years and on some level, he's known: He loves her. But this is the moment in nearly rushes off his lips; this is the moment he has to hold himself still. "Of course," he says, and to his credit, he doesn't reach for her when she draws her hand away.

* * *

Liv pours two glasses of wine and places them side-by-side on her coffee table. They nearly touch, and there's almost an impropriety to that—a suggestion about the people who will drink them. In truth, it's an innocuous gesture, but it makes Liv feel all the more daring nonetheless.

She checks her phone, smiles a picture of Noah from Sheila, and sets it aside. It's taken several months, but Olivia and Sheila have begun to trust each other again. She knows what happened with Noah isn't Sheila's fault—his grandmother loves him as much as she does and made herself sick with worry when she lost him—but it's taken time for Liv to get past the fear it might happen again.

This is the first night Noah has spent with Sheila, and Liv… Liv hasn't told Rafael that he won't be there. That's her second daring move.

If she thinks too much about the rest, she might move the wine to her kitchen.

Rafael knocks on her door at exactly 8:00—ever punctual, her ADA—and an avalanche of nerves slams into her. She lets him in, and he makes a beeline for the kitchen to set down whatever he's brought for dinner. Liv settles onto the couch.

It's become something of a routine these last few months, the occasional Friday night dinner with Rafa. He doesn't often cook, but he knows the best restaurants with takeout, and he's happy to clean the dishes. Noah has warmed to him, and to Liv's surprise, he's warmed to Noah. More than once, she's found them whispering conspiratorially over dessert, and she's begun to see something of Barba's courtroom flair in Noah's arguments against bedtime or baths.

He returns to the living room, shrugging off his coat, and notices Noah's absence. "He's with Sheila for the night," Liv explains. "They ganged up against me. Worked all the angles."

Rafael smiles. "He's a smart kid." He lingers there at the edge of the living room, his coat folded over his arm, suddenly unsure of himself. In all the years they've known each other, they've never been so alone as this.

Liv isn't blind. Even before Ed, there was a… _something_ with Rafael; in the last year or so, it's grown far beyond that. She denied herself so much for so many years—she refuses to lie to herself about what she feels, or about what she thinks she sees in Rafa's eyes sometimes. He doesn't show his hand often—and in fact, he hadn't at all until he learned about her relationship with Ed—but Liv is a great detective, so she's fairly certain of what he wants. 

So when Rafael glances at the kitchen and asks whether she's hungry, she says no and instead offers him a glass of wine.

"Liv," he says. He stays rooted in his spot, and her name comes out like a question. Hope flashes in his eyes.

"Rafa," she answers. It seems to be all he needs: He drops his coat on the loveseat as he crosses the living room to join her.

The glasses of wine sit forgotten on her coffee table, all but touching—relics now of what Liv and Rafael have left behind.


End file.
